First Post of 2012

Well here is to a great year for everyone. Alien's are an optimistic bunch so let's focus on a good year with lot's of growth for business, personally and having fun while at it. Now that the Space Daiquiri hangover is gone let's get down to business.

First off we will be blogging more often again and most likely moving the blog to a different platform in the next 3 months. Being bullish on Google as possibly taking over the net if they can integrate everything, who is to say Blogger can't be something beyond a simple blog one day? The G+ integration with other Google properties has slowly begun.

If you have not visited our Brand Page on Google Plus please do. We will be sharing our posts from here, news articles of note, and other stellar blog posts relative to advertising, marketing, business, mobile and social.

Sky Pulse Media on Google Plus

Next there was this great article written by Henry Blodget of Business Insider that discusses the misleading view that Facebook is beating Google. What Henry uses so incredibly is the data that us Alien's you always see crunching over and over to prove our points. The fact is currently Facebook in bringing in about $5 in GROSS REVENUE if that per user per year. That comes out to less than $0.50 per month. I don't know if Google has 800 million users like Facebook does. But say they did. They make over $10 in NET PROFITS per user per year and $50 per user in GROSS REVENUE.

The one thing Henry Blodget as all the Media refuse to cover is the fact that on a per person basis use of Facebook has been falling quite rapidly. It is unknown if the new timeline etc will change that. Back in April 2010 I wrote this analysis of the numbers taken directly from the Facebook Statistics Page. Since then all those stats have disappeared from the page. Why? Obviously they look unflattering. The last one to leave was time spent. It used to say 55 mins per person per day. Then 700 Billion minutes per month. Now it is gone. Because usage has dropped to below 30 mins per day per person. And that doesn't help support the IPO.

One thing Henry might agree on is my view that Facebook is really a massive pump and dump scheme by some big investors hoping to leave main street with the wreckage. Remember the Web is littered with companies that ruled the Web and were called invincible: Netscape. Yahoo. AOL. AOL Time Warner. Myspace. EBay. Priceline. Etc Etc. And Facebook will be one too.

Facebook has a nice business. But who says a better communication platform won't have people leaving in droves. They did this to Myspace. They will do it to Facebook if the offer is good enough. And technically facebook has had nothing but massive failures outside of photo sharing. Open Graph, Places, Commerce, Brand Pages. Nothing has been a huge success for participation. Because as Henry points out, we want to be social on Facebook vs hang with Brands.

Why Facebook Tracking is Different from Google or Verizon

Yesterday I announced I left Facebook over ethics, their push for forced sharing, and how they want so much of my personal information like my cell phone or credit card. I was really upset that they will be tracking every user even off Facebook without permission or alerting people. I don't care what the Engineer who responded to the Mashable Article said. He was bullshitting out his ass. You can not bullshit like that and be taken seriously. Facebook does nothing by accident.

Which brings me to why this is different. Google has been fighting censorship in China. They even shut down their site there for a long time moving it to Hong Kong. Most of the phone companies pushed back against the NSA wiretapping during the Bush years. 

Facebook is not this type in my opinion. Their business model is exploitation, vs one that is user centric. Ever Brand makes money providing me a valuable service. Facebook makes money exploiting my content and life. They need the page views and sharing because they wake up with stained underwear from freaking out about 'What if we IPO at only $20bil and lose all that investor money'. If you don't think this isn't on Zuckerberg's mind 24/7 you are in denial. This is a huge weight. Now go to the Fortune 500 and look at the companies worth $20bil or more and ask yourself based on Facebook revenues and unknown profits would they be equal value. I bet 95% of the companies when analyzed are worth more than Facebook when using the fundamentals of sales, assets etc.

When I talk on the phone Verizon doesn't share with my friends the content of that conversation.

When I use Google and surf the web (which btw the average person spends over 90% of their web time NOT on Facebook) they do not share with my friends or my boss where I was and what I did.

My Internet Provider is also my Cable provider. Time Warner isn't telling my friends what show I am watching.

I am not having brands intrude on my life from these activities. I am not getting emails from Brands because they sold my Gmail address. I am not getting telemarketing or even direct mail from any of these providers.

But Facebook wants to do all this. And they are going to do this and make it hard to opt out of this sharing. They will allow your friends to go to your profile and see you are watching a show on Hulu unless you change the privacy settings. How many really want this?

THAT IS THE BIG DIFFERENCE!

Lastly Facebook still thinks we want this Brand Experience and yet the people have been rejecting this for years. Look at what the people are doing you numbskulls! People are engaging with brands as less than 1% of their Facebook activity. BUT guess what? They do engage with Brands every day online and off social! Every day. On their own terms. Not Facebook's. Not a brand page terms. If you ever look at the Open Graph LIKES on non-Facebook sites the participation is technically zero. If you have 500k Views of a page and you get even 1000 Likes that is 0.2% which is zero. I see lower participation rates.

And since it's value to me as a Comm Platform has diminished over the last 2+ years, and with the clutter from the network making it impossible to truly stay in touch with friends will I miss it? Not sure. But with the 40% drop in time spent per user per day since April 2010 I am not the only one who has seen the value proposition drop significantly. And while I am a proponent of Social Media we use it a lot less than the Social Media Experts, Mashables, and Networks want you to believe. A Lot Less!

Don't forget we live in a Marketing/Advertising/Media bubble and while you might think I am just a Facebook hater, I do use advise on it, but it is a small part of the marketing mix. And since my career won't be affected if Facebook succeeds or if it fails I have a pretty objective view vs many of my peers who are desperate for the success of Social Media because that is what they built their career around.

My career? I help brands sell product. That is what I do. And I am free to do it with the best tools and strategies out there. Direct Sales, Social Media, Marketing, Mobile, TV, Radio, even Print if it fits their needs.

The Power of Social Media - Google goes Apple with + Project

Today Google released it's + Project

The Alien's at Sky Pulse Media are very excited because while we will advise people and brands on Facebook we view it as a massive marketing failure for Brands in general, big and small. Just peruse this blog! But we are very bullish on the Power of Social Media. And while we just debunked Viral and Influence yesterday, meaning how Individual Pieces of Content rarely go Viral. Topics go viral.

The number of Tweets and Blogs today about the Google + Project is overwhelming. This is classic APPLE. Apple doesn't do the Twitter/Facebook game. When Apple has an announcement and army of bloggers and tweeters and even big news sites all talk about APPLE. And today GOOGLE went APPLE!

By Friday everyone will know about this project and start looking at it to see if it can really compete against Facebook. And once the first stream of testers start telling us their experience this will either explode or die a quick death. Time will tell.

Some great discussions of Google + Project:

SpinSucks by Gini Dietrich

Barataria by Erik Hare

We Are Social by Robin Gant 

I am sure Mashable has a write up but who reads Mashable? Not serious Marketers or Thought Leaders.

Just check Twitter check the Blogosphere the world is on Fire over this. And that is the power of social media. It is PEOPLE POWER. Not BRAND POWER. When Google launched Wave it had an hour long presentation explaining it. No one cared. When Apple launched Ping. No one cared. But if you give the people reason to get excited. They will do the heavy lifting for you. If they yawn. Good luck. You can always convince us with 30 sec spots on TV!

Chief Alien Note: We changed the background for the posts to make them more readable even if they take away from the Space Theme.

Google's Brillant Chrome Do Not Track Feature

There was an article in Media Post and Marketing Voxx recently about Google incorporating Do Not Track features into their Chrome Browser. 

LINK

LINK

Overwhelmingly people reject behavioral targeting. If you have not read this study from the Social Science Research Network you should.

LINK

The results of this study should make anyone who runs a digital ad network that does behavioral tracking across websites to crap their drawers.

But Google isn't doing this because they care about what people think. This is a completely strategic bottom line move. It is completely brilliant!

1] How does Google make most of their money? 

Paid Search! If Ads were to show up anticipating what I want it would reduce my need to Google for information!

2] What other revenue source is big for Google?

 

The Google Ad Network! If Brands and Agencies could more accurately target consumers using Tracking Software, this reduces the number of Ads they have to place!

3] What is the biggest threat to Google's Ad Network and Paid Search? 

FireFox which allows blocking of all Ads including Google's Paid Search! 

There are 1 million downloads of Ad Blocker Plus per week from Mozilla! That technically enables 52million computers per year to deny Google revenue for Google Search or Ad Placements. What if a FireFox user decided to choose Chrome just so they are not tracked? They just converted 1 person and opened their computer to their main source of revenue and another big driver!

BRILLIANT!